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In a desolate public park in Columbus, Ohio, a man responded to the advances of a topless woman. She asked him to "show me yours." When he did, police officers arrested him. Columbus law says her being topless is OK; exposing his genitalia is not. Why did cops hide in the shadows to arrest a man no one but they could see? On last week's "20/20", Dr. Marty Klein pointed out that the police weren't protecting children. "There were no children anywhere in sight. In fact, there were no adults anywhere in sight." Klein says it's part of "America's War...

began teaching an undergraduate economics course this week. ... Blast from the Past I always appreciate the input from such students for three reasons. First, it's healthy for discussion. The essence of public policy is deciding what government should and should not do. The libertarian point of view, which basically argues for minimal government authority, helps to anchor that debate. Government has certainly caused plenty of problems, and the "law of unintended consequences" -- the notion that implementing a policy to fix one problem often creates another -- is one of the most important concepts for any policymaker to understand....

"You will always have the poor among you..." In those words Jesus stated a simple fact that has held true through the centuries. In every society, no matter how rich and bountiful, there have always been impoverished people. These people evoke our concern and sympathy. We want to help them, but how? No society has ever overcome poverty. In the US today, the question of how to help the poor is particularly controversial, with two partisan sides struggling vigorously to promote their own answers. The liberal camp argues that government is the best entity to help the poor at home...

As we consider the current condition of libertarianism, here in the middle of the 21st century, we might pause to reflect upon the bleak fate that befell the last flowering of personal freedom. That period of liberalism and liberation blossomed in the late 20th century, before coming to a disastrous end in the first decade of this new millennium. We can call that happy period the Rand Era, in honor of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged, a book still intensely and tragically relevant 101 years after its publication. But let's look back before we look to the present—and to...

Could Bob Barr become this year's Ralph Nader, helping to "spoil" the White House ambitions of John McCain. The former Georgia Republican congressman announced he was seeking the Libertarian nomination for president this week, and immediately disputed that he is spoiling things for anyone. "The American voters deserve better than simply the lesser of two evils," he said as he outlined his platform to freeze discretionary spending and withdraw from Iraq. [Snip] Still, Republicans claim they aren't concerned by Mr. Barr's possible appearance on all those state ballots. But they should be. You can bet cable TV producers who are...

PINAL COUNTY, Ariz. — The government of this fiefdom south of Phoenix claims that when it approved Dale Bell's blueprint for his Western-theme restaurant with an outdoor stage in an enclosed courtyard, it assumed the stage would be used for mimes or poetry readings. Mimes in Arizona scrubland? Poetry at the San Tan Flat Steakhouse and Saloon? The authorities were, they insist, shocked when country music broke out, and they are scandalized because some customers, not content to tap their feet to the Western beat while they eat, get up and dance.

It is fascinating watching politicians say how they are going to rescue the "rust belt" regions where jobs are disappearing and companies are either shutting down or moving elsewhere. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is being blamed for the jobs going elsewhere. Barack Obama blames the Clinton administration for NAFTA, and that includes Hillary Clinton. Senator Obama says that he is for free trade, provided it is "fair trade." That is election year rhetoric at its cleverest. Since "fair" is one of those words that can mean virtually anything to anybody, what this amounts to is that politicians...

Once upon a time, free-market advocacy was the distinguishing feature of conservatives. As the movement's early development spanned from the New Deal to the Great Society, conservatives were consistent in leading the intellectual defense of market competition, privatization, and deregulation. Many of the greatest achievements of the conservative movement can be partially or wholly credited to Milton Friedman, the brilliant Nobel-prize winning economist. Now, whatever market-friendliness is left among many mainstream conservatives is either a) predominantly overshadowed by social concerns, such as the imagined "threat to marriage" or "indecency"; b) replaced by trade protectionism, found most commonly in Midwestern and...

For me, drug use is immoral. The harder the drug, the more immoral. Why? I believe there is an inherent value in having control of our faculties at all times. So why, might you ask, do I believe that drugs should be legalized? The answer is simple – making drugs illegal only masks the problem and may, in fact, make the problem even worse. If a friend came to me and said, “Hey, I’m thinking about shooting up. What are your thoughts?” I would tell him that I value self-control and that drug use and the value of self-control are...

Residents of a tony, high-rise condominium along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis are among the first to vote to make their building smoke-free, taking Minnesota's battle over smoking bans into private homes. The rule, at La Rive Condominiums near St. Anthony Main, covers individual units, common areas, garages and private balconies. Current owners who want to smoke will be grandfathered in, but future buyers will have to abide by the rule. Opponents say the ban is an intrusion into private property rights that could hurt resale prospects at a time when the market is already soft. Supporters counter that, not...

Last week, The Weekly Standard ran an article by academics Benjamin and Jena Silber Storey praising the rise of Sen. John McCain in the Republican presidential primaries. The Weekly Standard has long been a McCain supporter, going back to the 2000 election. The magazine adores McCain's rugged, Theodore Roosevelt philosophy of governance, one that emphasizes American might, exalts public service, and believes that so long as the right people are governing, government can be a transformative, transcendent, almost mystical force for good in the world.The Weekly Standard began in the mid-1990s, on the heels of the dramatic GOP takeover of...

It has become a common view among pundits observing the Democratic primary campaign that there isn't a great deal of substantive disagreement between the frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and so the contest between them comes down to a contest of style - more specifically, Obama's style and Clinton's lack thereof - or perhaps, if Andrew Sullivan is right, a tectonic generational conflict. To the extent that both the media and the leading campaigns are propelling the idea that the underlying dynamic in the race is "change versus experience", it's true, and self-fulfillingly if not trivially so, that substantive...

I just got a phone call from a relative in West Virginia, a long time, hardcore libertarian who relayed to me the wildest story. He's totally a straight shooting guy and its not like he lays crazy rumors on me all the time, so whatever he said he heard he heard. And apparently there's a rumor going around that Huckabee is set to drop out of the presidential race and give a go towards the nomination with the Libertarian Party. Along with him, his staff, and his money would apparently come his constituency. And it would be all because of...

A reader writes in: "In response to a recent editorial, entitled 'Higher gasoline taxes?' that stated that because 'family paychecks barely cover basics, the money [needed to repair our country's crumbing infrastructure should come from] somewhere else.' What could this 'somewhere else' be? ... Is the Review-Journal advocating higher Federal income taxes, or a new national sales tax, or new toll road like user fees to pay for this? Also, how would higher withholding or sales taxes or higher user fees put more money in the pocket of the U.S. consumer? However defined, 'somewhere else' is just cost shifting." Aside...

For the past few months most libertarians have been pleased to see Ron Paul achieving unexpected success with his presidential campaign’s message of ending the Iraq war, abolishing the federal income tax, establishing sound money, and restoring the Constitution. Sure, some of us didn’t like his talk about closing the borders and his conspiratorial view of a North-South highway. But the main themes of his campaign, the ones that generated the multi-million-dollar online fundraising spectaculars and the youthful “Ron Paul Revolution,” were classic libertarian issues. It was particularly gratifying to see a presidential candidate tie the antiwar position to a...

Whenever anyone mentions Ron Paul, it really touches off Paulestinian nerves. Yesterday's piece was titled Ron Paul, get out of the Republican Party. The post on Free Republic touched off the longest comment thread I think I have ever seen there: 441 and still going, last I checked.Interestingly, I discovered early this morning that a similar "Ron Paul please leave the GOP" post went up on Redstate yesterday, titled Republicans to Ron Paul: Seriously, Get Lost. They even wrote it in 2nd person, just as I did. Sane minds think alike, it seems.Through all of this, I keep noticing that...

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Rep. Ron Paul has no plans to run on a third-party ticket, he told The Trail tonight, minutes before boarding a private jet to Los Angeles. And, it turns out, being excluded from the evening's Republican forum on Fox News landed the Texas congressman a second invitation on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." He'll be the lead guest on Monday's show, he said. "It's annoying not [being] able to participate in the debate," said Paul, adding that Fox News reporters and commentators "are warmongerers who don't want to hear other opinions."

'WAR is the health of the state," proclaimed Randolph Bourne, one of the comparatively few progressive intellectuals not to be seduced by the siren call of World War I. Bourne himself was but a momentary courier of the warning torch meant to illuminate the threat that standing armies, militarism, and foreign intervention supposedly present to liberty. "Brutus"--the author of the leading essays against ratification of the Constitution (the Anti-Federalist, as it were)--warned repeatedly that a permanent military and the strong central government necessary to sustain it were inimical to liberty at home. Thomas Jefferson famously shared similar anxieties. One irony...

RENO, Nev. (AP) - It's not exactly your average Republican fundraiser. A Nevada brothel owner is giving Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul his stamp of approval and plans to start raising money for the Texas congressman. Dennis Hof, owner of the Moonlite BunnyRanch near Carson City, says he'll leave collection boxes outside the door so people can drop in their political contributions. A spokesman for Paul says the politician with a libertarian streak doesn't condone prostitution on a personal level. But, he says, "it's not the role of federal government and it's not in the constitution for federal government to...

lib•er•tar•ian n. 1. a person who believes in the doctrine of the freedom of the will 2. a person who believes in full individual freedom of thought, expression and action 3. a freewheeling rebel who hates wiretaps, loves Ron Paul and is redirecting politics By Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch Sunday, November 25, 2007; Page B01 How to make sense of the Ron Paul revolution? What's behind the improbably successful (so far) presidential campaign of a 72-year-old 10-term Republican congressman from Texas who pines for the gold standard while drawing praise from another relic from the hyperinflationary 1970s, punk-rocker Johnny...

Well, when you've got a headache, you take an aspirin. When you've got the flu, you take something a little stronger. When you've got cancer, you need chemotherapy, which kills cancer cells but can come perilously close to killing the patient. It's a sad truth, but the Republican Party has the political equivalent of cancer. The party is immune from internal reform. Only the nastiest medicine imaginable can save it, and four (but probably eight) years of Clinton, backed by a Democratic congressional majority, is pretty tough medicine. Columnist Joe Dumas, writing for the Chattanoogan.com, captured the party's problem succinctly:...

For intellectual heft, the capacity to spark debate and controversy, the number of young people inspired by her writing over the decades, the endurance of her ideas as the basis of a philosophical movement, the broad influence of those ideas -- and oh yes, for the number of books sold -- she was the most important American author of the post-World War II era. And on this, the week of the 50th anniversary of publication of her greatest work, "Atlas Shrugged," if you happen to disagree with that assertion, Ayn Rand would not be at all bashful in pointing out...

The umbrella group Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, whose members include such progressive groups as the Service Employees Union International and MoveOn.org Political Action, issued a laudatory shout out today to Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the libertarian Republican presidential candidate: While Crowded Field of Republicans Follow Bush Over Cliff on Iraq War, Ron Paul Stands Out as Being Right on Iraq GOP Presidential Hopeful Decries Fellow Candidates’ Support of Endless War Washington, DC – While the rest of the Republicans continue to follow President Bush’s unpopular Iraq war policy, Representative Ron Paul is the lone anti-war Republican presidential candidate...

This weekend, I attended and spoke at the Second Amendment Foundation’s annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, which was held at a convention center in northern Kentucky, a few miles away from Cincinnati. What I saw and heard there changed my mind about the viability of Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy; Paul is going to far outperform the expectations laid out for him. First, for some background: twenty years ago, the Second Amendment Foundation (the second-largest pro-Second Amendment group in the U.S.) began sponsoring an annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, in conjunction with other pro-gun groups, including the NRA. For a full...

Anti-war presidential candidate Ron Paul says his campaign is about "restoring the vanishing American dream." And he is criticizing what he calls "the cartel controlling the banking and monetary system" in the United States. Fresh off his third-quarter fundraising surprise of $5 million, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul says the libertarian "revolution" he has started is growing across America. Paul told conservative activists at the "Defending the American Dream Summit" in Washington, DC, that the conference would be more aptly called the "Defending the Vanishing American Dream Summit." The Texas congressman said his Republican rivals often talk about a "flat...

How Libertarians Ought To Think About The U.S. Civil WarBy Timothy Sandefur[Reason Papers vol. 28, pp. 61-83, Spring 2006] I. IntroductionFor decades, outspoken libertarians have seen the Civil War not only as ahistorical calamity, but as a political calamity as well. According to many libertarians,the Union victory in the Civil War, and the presidency of Abraham Lincoln in general,represented a betrayal of American Constitution and of the fundamental principles ofAmerican political philosophy.This interpretation rests on two major arguments as well as a variety of moreminor concerns. The more minor concerns include specific critiques of the policies of theLincoln Administration, or...

Last week the Republicans had another debate, this one on FOX News. Not much has changed in the last few months; Rudy Giuliani is still in the lead in the polls and Fred Thompson is still in second despite the fact he didn't announce his intentions to run until a few days ago. What has changed, and changed for the worse, is the surging popularity of a Texas Congressman by the name of Ron Paul. I've been running into normal, intelligent people who support Paul, and it really scares me. The reason Paul is as popular as he is has...

A British pro-life group warns that a new type of embryo research, likely to be approved this week by a U.K. government panel, undermines human dignity. Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority is expected to give a green light this week to U.K. laboratories seeking to create the first animal-human embryos for medical research using eggs taken from dead cows. British scientists want to use the hybrid embryos in order to research genetic diseases. Anthony Ozimic, political secretary for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, opposes the embryo-destructive research. He says that an "a-nucleated" cow egg will only...

As we all look forward to more sputtering news conference antics from Sen. Larry Craig, here's hoping that the Idaho politician will eventually draw on traditional Republican principles and stand up for his right to engage in consensual sex in toilet stalls with men. Craig, a critic of the Patriot Act who weakened some of its worst provisions during last year's renewal vote, clearly understands the need to keep the government from snooping willy-nilly on its citizens. At first flush, the news that the 62-year-old senior senator from the Gem State pleaded guilty Aug. 8 to misdemeanor charges of disorderly...

- Snip - "That would be beautiful," Nugent said when asked if he would run for governor of Michigan in 2010. "I have threatened to do so and I was sincere." Some of Nugent's antics make even Schwarzenegger's past outspokenness appear measured by comparison. "Michigan was once a great state. Michigan was a state that rewarded the entrepreneur and the most productive, work-ethic families of the state. Now the pimps and the whores and the welfare brats are basically the state's babies." - Snip -

It was the breaking-news headline last Friday that three construction workers had died in a coal-mine accident in Princeton, Ind., and maybe the markets melting down too, that congealed in my mind a thought I'd been kicking around for a while now: Our country is having an "Atlas Shrugged" moment. Trapped coal miners in Utah, smashed levees in New Orleans, busted steam pipes and flooded subways in New York City, a collapsed bridge over the Mississippi River in Minnesota, an air-traffic-control system stressed to its break point. Could this really be a description of the most prosperous country on the...

In 1985 a prominent liberal legal figure argued that Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion, was a “heavy-handed judicial intervention” that “was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.” The writer was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, now an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court—and also now a strong supporter of Roe. Ginsburg isn’t the only backer of abortion rights to have taken issue with the 1973 decision. In 1995, for example, the University of Chicago’s Cass Sunstein, a superstar among liberal law professors, wrote in the Harvard...

A wealthy libertarian is bankrolling a challenge to D.C.’s gun regulations—the most restrictive in the country. What drives him—and his take on whether the case will go to the Supreme Court. The District of Columbia has the most restrictive gun laws in the country. But that’s a distinction the nation’s capital will soon lose—if Robert Levy prevails. Levy was born in Washington, but left years ago; a resident of Naples, Fla., who made a fortune as an investment analyst, he is now a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. A critic of what he sees as...

Why some libertarians don't want to join the Ron Paul revolution.Republican congressman from Texas (and 1988 Libertarian Party presidential candidate) Ron Paul seems to be doing pretty good for libertarianism these days. He's gotten more press exposure and more Internet buzz than any libertarian movement political figure, and has done so outside the dead-end third party context. A surprising amount of the attention has even been respectful and positive—and for a candidate as ignored and excluded as Paul, any press short of a full-on hostile shredding is good news.Sure, he still has zero traction (well, 2 percent) in conventional polling....

Cities need to keep fees and taxes low. City staff should be helpful to customers. Hey, why not schedule office hours at times that suit those customers, not that suit city workers? Yet cities are increasingly closing their offices Fridays so that workers have another day off. Cities need to look at privatization and at shedding unnecessary departments – Sandy Springs, Ga., privatized the entire city (with the exception of public safety services) and is far better run and more efficient than neighboring cities. This new urban agenda also would end subsidies and special privileges for politically well-connected businesses, with...

I interviewed Michael Moore recently for an upcoming "20/20" special on health care. It's refreshing to interview a leftist who proudly admits he's a leftist. He told me that government should provide "food care" as well as health care and that big government would work if only the right people were in charge. Moore added, "I watch your show and I know where you are coming from. ... " He knows I defend limited government, so he tried to explain why I was wrong. He began in a revealing way: "I gotta believe that, even though I know you're very...

President Bush and his pro-amnesty allies both in and out of Congress suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of the American people. Like any other public controversy, there are vested interests served on both sides of the amnesty issue, but I'd like to raise some ordinary non-rocket-science questions to the pro-amnesty crowd, many of whom are my libertarian friends. Do people, anywhere in the world, have a right to enter the United States irrespective of our laws pertaining to immigration? Unless one wishes to obfuscate, there's a simple "yes" or "no" answer to that question. If a "yes" answer...

Last week, I bemoaned New York Times columnist David Brooks's eagerness to have government impose force on others. He was promoting programs like "National Service." Why are many conservatives so eager to wield force? Conservatives used to complain when so-called liberals did that. That same week I happened to interview filmmaker Michael Moore for "20/20." Moore wants government to monopolize health care. His new film, "Sicko," argues that Canada and France approach paradise because their governments provide health care and more. This brought him standing ovations in Cannes. "But government is force," I said to him. He was incredulous. Michael...

f I refuse to pay the full amount, I will become a ward of one of the biggest growth industries in the country: the government-run prison system. I am free to pay about half of all my earnings to the government, which will use those taxes to erect a multitude of offices and pay its workers salaries and benefits that are far more than most of us will ever earn. The government's "child protective services" workers are free to take anyone's children away from them based on their discretion. Parents are then forced into a totally secret court system, in...

ibertarians often get a bad rap as greedy capitalist baby killers with absolutely no commitment to morality or value. Nothing could be further from the truth. The core ideal behind libertarianism is individual liberty. Thus, libertarians place a great deal of emphasis on the individual and his ability to make decisions for himself. I would take this one step further and add that libertarians do not believe in the concept of social or collective rights; rights, by the very definition, can only pertain to the individual.

At a recent press conference Sen. John Kerry was upset as he snarled, "Oil companies in America are reporting record profits. Record profits." When did profit become a dirty word?" I wish the oil executives would face the media. They could say something like: "What are you complaining about? What do you think we do with our profits? Buy fancy cars and homes? Well, we do, actually, but nearly all the money goes to looking for more oil and following environmental rules that you want us to follow. You should want us to make more profit. Anyway, we make less...

Some people hate me because I defend free markets. Once someone accosted me on a New York City street and said, "I hope you die soon." Why the hostility to commerce? What could be more benign than the freedom to trade with whomever you wish? I suspect ignorance about economics leads many to believe that when two people exchange goods and money, one wins and the other loses. If rich capitalists profit, the poor and the weak suffer. That's a myth. How many times have you paid $1 for a cup of coffee and after the clerk said, "thank you,"...

Eric Dondero, a former Ron Paul staffer, is declaring against his former boss after last night's debate embarrassment, where Mr. Paul appeared to blame 9/11 on U.S. foreign policy. You can read his full missive after the jump... Good morning, I am making this announcement on my favorite website RedState.com. Many of you here have urged me to take this course. And now, after last night's GOP Presidential debate, I've decided to move ahead with my plans. I have spent the early morning scanning the major political blogs, and news sites. It's unanimous. Ron Paul got slammed by Rudy Giuliani...

Pricey Harrison, a state legislator from Greensboro has proposed a law that we ban entirely the incandescent light bulb. The proposed bill is HR 838. Instapundit has some stuff on this, as well.

Jim Harper of the CATO Institute wrote an outstanding article on the REAL ID Act. While trekking through our local Fox News Headlines in the dense jungles of Washington DC, Harper's article put me on the scent of four fine specimens of RINO. The RINOs I found are four Republican Senators who have cosponsored the REAL ID Act most recently authored by Senator Susan Collins (R-ME). I thought I was on the trail for five, but it seems as if though Sen Carper (D-DE) was just another liberal democrat trying to increase the size and scope of government by cosponsoring...

II Coupled with the rise of the modern nation-state and stemming from the ideas the Enlightenment was the development of parallel systems of belief about the nature of ideas: liberalism and conservatism. Conservatism is an institution (not monolithic but an institution nonetheless) that embodies a certain set of ideas built around a realistic view of man. The basic premise of conservatism since Edmund Burke has always been that reason alone is not a good enough basis for political action, that religion, traditions and common sense have something to teach us. Equality, social justice, pacifism, atheism, socialism and other ideas are...

Just two years ago, conservatives were in a triumphalist mood. George W. Bush’s supporters trumpeted him as the man who had won more popular votes for president than anyone else in the history of the Republic. With Republicans also adding to their majorities in both houses of Congress, America seemed to have become, as The Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait dubbed her in the title of their 2004 book, The Right Nation. No one would have anticipated that in January 2007 a cover story in Commentary would be asking, “Is Conservatism Finished?” There were conservative pessimists—especially among the few...

BISMARK, N.D. (AP)-North Dakota issued the nation's first licenses to grow industrial hemp Tuesday to two farmers who still must meed federal requirements before they can plant the crop.The farmers must get approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration, which treats hemp much the way it does marijuana and has not allowed commercial hemp production but has said it would consider applications to grow it.

I. INTRODUCTION:“Libertarians” and “conservatives” often duke it out on Free Republic. This usually occurs over the legalization of drugs but other social issues result in vitriolic debates as well Russell Kirk in Chapter XI of his book, The Politics of Prudence, argues most libertarians are not conservatives. They are really radicals of the right. But before we can present Russell’s arguments we must first document what a “conservative” is. Previously, I have summarized Kirk’s views as to conservativism by summarizing another chapter of this book, Ten Conservative Principles. Human nature is such that few will have the time or interest...

Last month, President Bush declared Nov. 30 "National Methamphetamine Awareness Day."The official statement from the White House implored, "I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate programs and activities."There's no question that meth is a particularly nasty, vicious drug, both in how it's manufactured and in what it does to the people who use it. I think some skeptics have raised legitimate questions about the accuracy of some of the more hysterical media proclaiming we're in the midst of an "epidemic," but there's no question that the drug is widely available, and that...